


Hide My Love

by wemadguys



Series: Fictober 2020 [7]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e03 Dead Man's Chest, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Season/Series 02, Sexy Angst, yep that's pretty much it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27111277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemadguys/pseuds/wemadguys
Summary: chapter two summary:It’s pleasurable, to be sure, to be carrying on this way with Jack Robinson – like drinking the finest whisky, stroking the smoothest leather, and eating the richest dessert. So why then, after he’s melted away into the quiet night once more, does she feel this way?
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Series: Fictober 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952428
Comments: 29
Kudos: 70





	1. I know about wanting what you can't have

**Author's Note:**

> Fictober day 19 prompt: I can't do this anymore.
> 
> I can't help but think that Phryne and Jack hooking up before they were ready could have been disastrous, and I don't think they were even close to ready before late season three lmao. So, for the sake of chaos, I have set this in early-to-mid season 2, some time post Dead Man's Chest.

_I can’t do this anymore._

It’s what he thinks when he shows up on her doorstep for a gathering to celebrate Dr. MacMillian’s recent promotion at the hospital (he’d never gotten a formal invitation or even an informal one; Collins had mentioned in passing that Miss Fisher had asked Dot to ask him to inform Jack that drinks were at seven and dinner at eight). 

It’s what he thinks when Phryne doesn’t even bother to cross the room to greet him and what he thinks as she allows him to pace the perimeter of the room alone all night, always something of an outsider looking in (he desperately misses when she’d stand and observe with him, periodically whispering clever asides in his ear as if he were her only true confidante in the room).

It’s what he’s thinking as he stands at the mantle and watches her say goodbye to all her friends one by one, as Miss Williams and Mr. Butler retire for the night. It’s even what he’s thinking (screaming to himself) when they’re blessedly (cursedly) alone at last and she finally approaches him with an outstretched hand. 

He’s always still as she reaches for him, and he suspects she prefers it that way. An ongoing arrangement such as this is would never do for her if she thought he was too eager. Besides, he still has the presence of mind at that point to feel a growing sense of dread at what he is about to do.

But at the first sensation of her skin on his, at that teasing, suggestive tug on his fingers, he stops thinking anything at all.

She never touches him anywhere but his hand until they’re over the threshold of her room. She kisses him immediately then, though, not a word falling from her lips. In fact, their lovemaking is surprisingly silent on the whole. He’d half expected her to be louder, more outwardly enthusiastic. To laugh openly, to give over to ecstasy as bombastically as she does everything else in life.

Instead, she is rapacious. She gnaws on his nipples and claws at his skin; she rides his cock intensely, her pace frenetic and her eyes, deep and dark and hungry, fixed on his face all the while. He suspects she wants something specific from him, something that he’s yet to give – but he can’t seem to pin down what it is.

When she lets him take the lead, he is slow and savouring, her polar opposite. He allows himself to drown in the heat and salt of her skin, letting reverent presses of lips whisper his secrets to her. _I want more than this_ , he says with a long kiss to the hollow between her breasts. _You’re my love_ , he tells her as he mouths the jutting curve of her hip. _I want only you_ , he admits with the first dip of his tongue into her center. 

_Do. You. Understand?_ He asks with his cock through slow, searing, revealing thrusts. 

As he talks to her, she maintains her silence. She scratches at his shoulders as he kisses down her body, runs her fingers through his hair when his head is between her thighs, she pants into his mouth when he’s inside her – but there’s something missing. She’ll squeeze her eyes shut tight and lay her head back to bear her throat to him, but in these moments she avoids his gaze. _It’s me_ , he reminds her with the soft trail of kisses he leaves down her jaw. _Can't you tell me from another?_

Afterwards, when the haze of pleasure weighs down his limbs and his eyes begin to droop shut, that niggling little thought worms its way back into his consciousness.

_I can't do this anymore._

It is a slap to his blissed out, sated face, and it doesn't help that Phryne is all business after lovemaking - rushing to the other room to remove her diaphragm and relieve herself, running all around gathering her clothes from the floor. When it first became clear that she wanted to make this a regular occurrence, she would gather his suit in her arms, and, in a politely detached voice, offer to have Mr. Butler press it for the morning.

Without fail, he would smile at the ceiling and make his excuses, awkwardly redressing and getting on his way as swiftly as possible. She doesn't bother asking anymore.

There is a twisted sort of domesticity to it all, though, Jack thinks. After tonight's rendezvous, she goes about her routine as always. Instead of keeping up the pretence of politeness, she has taken to setting his things on the end of the bed without a word before crossing the room to pour herself a finger of Glenfiddich. 

As she stands at the window and sips, he dresses, the only sound in the room the rustling of his clothes. When he's finally presentable, he turns in her direction and pauses a moment to watch her watch the dark and quiet street below. 

_I can't do this anymore._

“I suppose I'll see you trespassing through one of my crime scenes soon enough, Miss Fisher," he says. It's a poor attempt at levity and a laughable attempt at formality as she stands in nothing but a hastily secured dressing gown and he can still taste her pleasure on his tongue. He forges ahead with it anyway. 

She turns toward him and stares for long seconds, the darkness of the room concealing her expression. “Goodnight, Jack,” she replies at length, voice contemplative. _What are you thinking_? he wants to ask. _Do you have any thoughts about what passes between us in the night, or has your agile mind already moved on to more important matters?_

She is so exceptional, so unique, so good. She takes on the burdens of others as her own, working tirelessly to right every wrong in her path. Few understand Phryne’s sacrifice. Her vigilance. They’re familiar to Jack. For so long, he thought he understood her secret smiles, thought she saw right through his own. Now that he is closer to her than ever, she stands apart from him bathed in shadows, a mystery once more.

He hates to leave her. He hates that he’s stayed this long.

Only hesitating a moment, he reaches blindly for the knob. With one final glance back at her, he turns to go, the punctuating _click_ of the door shaking him out of his fog.

 _I can’t do this anymore_.

But that’s thing – he knows he will anyway.


	2. This Love is a Bloodbath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amid flashbacks to their first time together (set during Dead Man's Chest), Phryne considers the recent developments in her and Jack's relationship before coming to an unfortunate decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost exactly two full months later,,,,,,,,,,chapter two! oops lol. and it got long. I still plan to conclude this in the third chapter, which should be easier to write simply because it will include less introspection and more action.
> 
> and one quick note about the flashbacks: the chapter sections here trade off between "present day" and the "past" AU of dead man's chest as they go. so the first section is based in the present, the next the past, the one after that the present, and so on.

They always say that after the first drag of your very first cigarette, you're hooked for life.

Phryne smoked constantly in Paris. It was a way of life there, the currency you exchanged to connect with those around you. But from the moment she left the city behind – standing on the ship’s deck and watching as it slowly shrank from her entire world to a distant speck of light to nothing at all – she never had a single craving.

But in these moments, standing at the window waiting for Jack to leave, it is the burn of a cigarette that she craves. On the one hand, she feels like she always does after a good romp: that sweet, satisfying ache between her legs spread throughout her body, clearing her head and relaxing her completely.

But on the other...

She'd thought they could add this, add pleasure and release to their already so lively dynamic, and that nothing would change. Well, she had thought it might make them sharper, happier, perhaps freer.

Even Phryne is wrong sometimes.

~~~~~~

They wash up on the shore like beached whales, flopping backwards on the sand to rest. “Well,” Phryne says after she’s caught her breath, “looks like I was right about the dock workers.”

Jack stares at the dark sky as he replies. “Lucky guess, Miss Fisher.”

She sits up, indignant. “Lucky guess! That was good investigating, that was following strong intuition. I–”

”Your brilliance is never in question with me,” he interrupts, the most fascinating mix of earnestness and sarcasm in his voice.

‘So I should think,” she answers with a half-hearted glare and a full-hearted, lingering glance up his lithe form. As her eyes reach his face, she prepares to gloat in victory as her stoic companion’s mouth begins to turn up at the corners. But like the sand beneath the waves crashing just beyond their feet, it's quickly overtaken by a mammoth-sized yawn.

It’s funny, the things that make you feel the most present, the most alive. To see Jack Robinson – as familiar, enticing, and aloof as the scent of freshly brewed coffee – do something so human. His eyes close and for a split second his voice pitches higher than she’s ever heard it. The thing takes over his form, leads him to stretch his drenched limbs out into the sand, the momentum of it enough to drive him to sit up.

So he really is flesh and blood, her Jack. Of course she’s always known that intellectually, but sometimes he feels separate from it all – from everything, from everyone. Like she’s a girl sneaking out to meet a boy who wants her help digging for buried treasure in the night. Her times with Jack are scraped elbows and bruised knees. Whispered conversations and shared jokes. He’s her friend, her secret joy. He might be a man with a jawline she’d like to sink her teeth into and muscled thighs she’s imagined wrapped tight around her hips, but he’s also the boy who brings her dead bugs as presents because he knows she likes them. The boy she gifts with sweets just to see his face light up. 

“What is it?” Jack asks at length.

“Hmm?” she replies, lost in thought.

“You're staring.” He clears his throat. “At me.”

Her blood flows warmly through her veins as her eyes sweep over the handsome planes of his face and that uncomfortable half smile. “No, I'm not.” Both to change the subject and because she's curious, Phryne adds, “Are you tired, Jack?”

“Perhaps a bit,” he responds with a conspiratorial tilt of his head.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we? Not when my murderer is still on the loose.”

“It’s your murderer now, is it?” he asks as he stands, sand clinging to his trench coat, and reaches out a hand to her. “I knew you collected strays, Miss Fisher, but that's taking things a bit too far, don’t you think?”

His hand is cool in hers as she allows him to pull her up, the morning air hitting her drenched clothes and making her shiver. “Cold?” He asks in a low voice.

With a twitch of her lips, she echoes him from a moment ago. “Perhaps a bit.”

Without a hint of hesitation, Jack brings his arm around her waist and pulls her into his side. “I might be able to help with that. At least until we get out of this breeze.”

Wrapping both her arms around his middle, she looks up into his eyes and smiles. “Lead the way, Jack.”

~~~~~~

Phryne examines herself in the mirror, mapping out the marks Jack's left on her skin. He's really rather good, she's noticed, at lingering only in places that will never see the light of day.

Brushing her fingers across a small bruise on her hip, she remembers his mouth over the spot. There’s something about the way he touches her at times that she can’t bear. He’d bit down gently there tonight and sucked her skin between reverent lips, and she’d had to wrap her opposite leg around his shoulders to drag his face closer to her cunt to make him stop – anything to turn that sensation into something else, something more straightforward.

She has always known Jack to be a passionate man. His every move and glance exude it – if you’re perceptive enough to recognize them for what they are. With so much depth, though, inevitably comes complication. When Phryne turns away the attentions of married men, it is usually out of respect for the woman in the picture. But Jack had been a bachelor in practice if not in name for years when she met him. It was for his own sake, then, that she allowed his tenuous boundaries to hold with little quibble.

She learned from that experience that Jack harbours a rather traditional mindset in matters of the flesh. It’s a trait she’s respected but not one that she’s seen as central to his character. All along, she’s believed this to be a minor hang up, something that will fade in time. That eventually she will do enough to make him let go, to surrender to the feeling of her skin beneath his mouth and fingertips rather than the roiling thoughts in his head.

Indeed, a part of her feels they have this very debate every time they end up between her expensive silk sheets together. She attempts to take Jack Robinson apart piece by stoic piece – to ride him within an inch of his life, to dig her nails into the meat of his shoulders – to show him what it is to run on sensation alone. And when she allows it, he will turn the tables on her, mouth like liquid fire branding his very soul into her flesh – even if she can't always bear the painfully intimate pleasure of it.

They’re opposing factions, two ends of a winding, complex spectrum that intersect only when their bodies come together in the night. It is an unspeakably delicious dynamic; she’s found herself craving it often.

Like tonight. It had been a long and difficult week, and Phryne wanted to unwind. There was no real reason for Jack to come to Mac’s celebration but, she’d mused, no real reason for him to be excluded either. So her invitation was presented casually, as if an afterthought. She was delighted when he showed, seeing it as a victory for her point of view.

Normally, Jack mingles among her circle quite well. He is a kind, polite, and interesting man; people can’t help but like him. But tonight, he had no interest in conversation. Instead, he’d stalked the edges of her parlour all evening like a caged animal, his gaze imperious and aloof. His eyes followed her constantly. His restlessness, his distance, made her hot all over. They made her want to toy with him, to drive him mad with want of her.

So she had. She never approached him, never looked at him, and let him squirm. By the end of the night, her mouth as dry as the Sahara and an active thrum between her legs, there was only one thing left on her mind.

And, as always, he hadn’t disappointed. His hands gliding down her sides, thumbs grazing her breasts and digging into her hips; his teeth on her neck; his mouth on her breasts, on her stomach; his tongue stroking through her wetness; and his cock moving inside her, leaving her breathless – Jack gives the best kind of pleasure. Any man can look good (and Phryne always has had a predilection for shiny things), but the best toys are those you can really play with. And Jack Robinson, well, he is good for hours and hours of fun.

And though he is far from a light-hearted companion, Phryne has always viewed Jack’s serious attitude in the bedroom as an extension of his serious bent in other parts of life. Plus, intensity does have its appeal in a lover.

It’s pleasurable, to be sure, to be carrying on this way with Jack Robinson – like drinking the finest whisky, stroking the smoothest leather, and eating the richest dessert. She wouldn’t maintain such a regular arrangement with anyone less worthy. So why, then, after he’s melted away into the quiet night once more, does she feel this way? This sense of foreboding, this emptiness. Somehow burnt out and overwrought at once. Keyed up and unspeakably exhausted.

She looks back on the evening in hopes of pinpointing the source of her unease. She supposes it was a rather odd party, all things considered. She and Jack usually end up socializing a great deal at these things, and they never spoke. Not once. And Jack himself behaved the oddest of all. So stern, almost crazed. He couldn’t stand still, and he is the calmest, most level man she’s ever met.

Perhaps that’s the crux of it. Following that inquiry, she starts to think on Jack’s recent behaviour in a new light. Like when they’d locked gazes while his head was between her thighs tonight; was the storm she saw behind his eyes unrestrained passion for her sex – or something graver? Come to think of it, why _has_ he never stayed the night? She’s extended so many invitations…

She thinks back further, to the end of their most recent case together. He’d been stiff and formal during their nightcap, only coming alive when she finally pulled him upstairs. She’d chalked it up to exhaustion at the time, focused as she was on peeling each layer off him one by one. But what if it was something else?

Once she decides that Jack is the reason for her disquiet, Phryne grows restless with the notion. One skill she never has been able to master is idleness. Passivity is her own greatest sin and in some ways her lifelong white whale as well. And if she is nothing else, Phryne Fisher is a survivor. She can, has, and does endure great pain, setbacks, and grief with a smile in her face and steel in her spine. So she’ll be damned if she loses Jack Robinson's friendship over something so silly as a few ill-advised trysts.

Mind made up, she cannot wait to act. She selects an outfit from her wardrobe – black trousers, black blouse, black coat – and heads out into the night.

~~~~~~

They enter Phryne’s guest parlour through the upstairs window, their landing cushioned by the drenched coats that they’ve tossed in ahead of them. Phryne’s elbow inadvertently stabs into Jack’s abdomen as she falls half on top of him, and he lets out a gasp of pain that soon gives way to laughter.

“Jack!” Phryne exclaims, laughing as well. “Are you alright?”

Panicked, Jack quickly brings his index finger to Phryne’s lips. “Shhhh,” he admonishes. At the same moment, her own hand goes to rest on his stomach in apology.

His lower stomach.

She feels as he takes a deep, bracing breath. When he tries to remove his finger, she rushes to wrap her free hand around it to hold it in place. “Thank you for a lovely evening on the town, Inspector.”

He smiles. “The stench of saltwater and rotting fish will forever remind me of you.”

Phryne’s smile grows, and she has to fight a pleased laugh from spilling out. Instead, she lowers her lips to the finger that she holds in her own and places a light, lingering kiss to the tip. When she glances back up at his face, his smile is gone but his eyes are soft as down. She leans forward to kiss the finger again.

“Phryne,” Jack gasps when her mouth makes contact. It’s a desperate sound – and it’s music to her ears.

“May I kiss you, Jack?” she asks quietly, earnestly.

His eyes search her face. “You just did,” he responds in a gravelly, teasing voice.

Phryne lets go of his finger and moves her hand to the now wild waves of his hair, smoothing them back out of his face. Leaning down until her lips are only a breath above his, she whispers, “Not what I meant, darling.”

Her eyes follow his smile as it grows and grows. To remind him of her question, she just barely grazes his top lip with her bottom one. Jack lets out a low chuckle. “Yes,” He whispers, “yes, you ca–”

Before he can finish, she crushes her lips to his.

~~~~~~

His street, when she turns onto it, is dark. She slows as she approaches his tidy bungalow, parking on the street rather than up his little drive.

Once, not long after Phryne first met Jack, she’d snooped through his desk when no one was looking. She hadn’t really trusted him then, hadn’t yet been gifted with the delightful depths that lay behind his stern, unforgiving gaze. But in the search, she’d found a document with the inspector’s address on it and had for some reason committed it to memory.

Her knock on his door is soft, but it rings in her ears. Part of her hopes he is asleep, but she hears movement somewhere inside before long. When the loudening footsteps suddenly cease on the other side, she calls, “Jack, it's me.”

He opens the door wearing just his singlet, belt, and trousers. Even after all the times she's had him, the sight of his bare arms still makes her want to drag him right back into bed. His eyes pore over her, but she cannot read them through the shadows on his face. “Did I forget something?” he asks at length.

“No, I – may I come in?”

He backs away from the doorframe, gesturing to her in welcome. She’s never been here before, but he doesn’t bother with a tour. Instead, he silently leads her down a short corridor and into a neat, sparingly furnished parlour. He pours them each a glass of brandy as Phryne goes to sit in one of the two armchairs in front of a fireplace. Instead of joining her, Jack chooses to stand and lean on his mantle.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Fisher?” he asks casually, as if she hadn’t swallowed his cries of ecstasy with lips and tongue mere hours ago.

She studies him, looking for the marks she left behind. His hair is all askew, and her fingers twitch at the memory of stroking through his locks. Undoing the tidiness brought by his pomade is one of her particular joys. Above the neckline of his singlet, she can see her teeth marks on his collarbone and a bruise low on his throat. He looks thoroughly fucked. Debauched. She wants him again. She looks away.

“Jack, are you – how are you?”

“In general?” he asks, and this time there is an unmistakable hint of bitterness in his tone. She glances back up at him sharply.

“See? There. There’s something wrong. What is it?”

“Maybe it’s that I’ve yet to sleep and I have to be at the station in four hours.”

“No,” she huffs in frustration – whether at him or herself she’s unsure – as she clarifies, “I want to know how you’re feeling about, about our…arrangement.”

“Our Arrangement,” he repeats blankly.

“Yes. Are you satisfied with it?” Through the glow of the firelight, she watches as something dark and hollow comes over his face. He won’t look at her, even as he opens his mouth to reply only to shut it again when words apparently fail him. “You’re not, are you?” she adds, realization dawning. “Oh, Jack, why haven’t you said?”

“I’m fine,” he argues, his jaw tight.

“’Fine’ people don’t clench their fists until their knuckles are white. Look, it’s alright. I know this…sort of thing isn’t for everyone.”

“You needn’t have come all the way out here, Miss Fisher,” he bites back. “You don’t want me warming your bed anymore. Message received.”

“I want you all the time.” There is something wild in his eyes when they meet hers then, like he wants to forget this conversation and take her where she stands. A part of her desperately wants him to. “But I can feel you slipping away from me, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”

“I’m right here.”

“I should never have pushed you into this in the first place.”

“I’m not some innocent schoolgirl you’ve corrupted, Miss Fisher. I’m a grown man. My choices are my own.”

“As are mine.”

“I’m not disputing that.”

Phryne closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to calm herself. “Tell me we can be friends again,” she commands.

“We’ve always been that.”

“Then tell me this won’t change things for us.”

He pauses, and some of his fight seems to go out of him. “I can’t.”

This is what she’s been afraid of. “Jack, we can’t lose what we have. What we do together. It’s too important.” He stares into the fire, saying nothing. “I’ve never made a secret of how much I want you. And when I finally had you,” she adds with a humourless laugh, “I couldn’t get enough of you. I want you again right now.” She has to close her eyes at her own words, the truth of the statement almost enough to overwhelm her.

Still, he won’t look at her. She reaches out to gently clasp his fingers in her own. He glances up at the touch. “But none of that matters, none of it, if we aren’t friends. And partners.” She moves closer, and his relaxed posture emboldens her to cup his face in her palm. “Do you understand?”

His eyes bore into her own. “Perfectly,” he responds after a moment, voice devoid of inflection. Then, with all the distaste that one expresses when swatting away a fly, he deliberately removes her hand from his cheek.

His dismissal hurts more than she might have expected, and she absurdly feels her eyes fill with tears. He notices and ever the kind, caring man he is, he attempts to make her feel better. “I just need some time,” he tells her with his small polite smile. “To adjust.”

Time. Patience is not one of her virtues, but for Jack, she can try. “Alright. But I’ll see you soon?” she asks hopefully.

He nods, solemn, unsure but honest. “Soon.”

~~~~~~

His lips. She’s fixated on them, can’t stop kissing them or tracing their curved lines with her fingertips. His eyes are closed, have been closed since he came apart underneath her with a long, low moan.

“Jack,” she warns, “you can’t sleep.”

He opens his eyes then and finds her own, warming her with their soft, sated edges. She smiles at him openly, helplessly. His lips just turn up at the corners in response. He reaches out and traces his index finger down her nose, and a spark, heated and slow, travels up her spine. “You’ve tired me out,” he accuses.

Oh, this is more lethal than she thought, Jack naked in bed and pouting at her. Would that they could spend all day, all week, all month, wrapped up together. Just the sight of him – those hands, those eyes, those goddamned lips – fills her with a want so intoxicating she can hardly bear it.

“Hold that thought, Jack,” she rasps in answer to both him and her own musings, giving him a sultry grin and one last brief kiss as she rises and makes for her wardrobe. “We have a murderer to catch.” It’s an important reminder. If she thinks about him for another second she might just melt on the spot. To distract herself, she searches through her clothes, carefully selecting her outfit for the day as her mind obligingly shifts into investigative mode. “Do you want first dibs on the shower in the guest bath, or shall that honour go to me?” she asks over her shoulder.

He doesn’t answer. She turns back to find him staring blankly out the window. “Jaaaack,” she calls with a laugh at his uncharacteristically rumpled look. His eyes travel slowly to hers, and she gets the sense that his mind is somewhere far away. He really must be tired, then.

A few minutes later when she’s run out of reasons to linger, she announces that she’ll meet him downstairs in an hour for breakfast. He’s gone back to looking out the window, and her eyes pore over him openly. Greedily. His bare shoulders, his arms, the hard jut of his hip just poking out from under the sheet.

She wants – oh, does she want. But there’s work to be done. She turns to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know, i know, they still aren't in a good place. But early-mid s2 phryne simply wasn't there yet! she HAS to do her little BATW "what we do best together" thing before she can let herself acknowledge anything deeper......it does suck that she's hurting jack in the process, but what can ya do?
> 
> ANYWAYS. as always, thanks for reading :)

**Author's Note:**

> I have plans for this concept, so if you despair at the unhappy ending here, note the projected chapter count and check back in with it later :)


End file.
